SYNTHPETS

SYNTHPETS investigates the domestication of artificial life. The series presents digital creatures that resemble responsive entities, exploring synthetic companionship in a culture increasingly willing to substitute simulation for presence, where emotional engagement is mediated, performed, and engineered.

These beings function as surfaces onto which care, affection, and play are projected. What appears as interaction is a constructed loop between viewer expectation and designed gesture. Soft textures, tilted heads, subtle movements — minimal cues trigger attachment. The work exposes how empathy can be activated without reciprocity.

Emerging from earlier systemic explorations in Supermono, the project shifts from infrastructure to intimacy. It focuses on the psychology of attachment to simulated presence and observes a contemporary condition: humans capable of forming bonds with systems that only perform closeness.